Over the past many years the need for a newspaper vendor that would dispense one newspaper at a time has been recognized. As far back as 1891 U.S. Pat. No. 464,067 was issued to M. H. Foster for a drop shelf vendor. Other examples of the drop shelf vending of periodicals are U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,256,071 Steiner; 2,753,003 Fancher; 2,904,216 Poland; 3,946,846 Pepiciello and many others. Each, no doubt, an improvement over the other but all relatively slow to load and expensive to produce. Even the present inventor's Application Ser. No. 066,481 which teaches a shelf orientation conducive to loading a multiplicity of papers at one stroke is still substantially more expensive to manufacture and not as fast to load as the conventional semi-honor bulk load vendors. More recently efforts have been expanded to develop bulk load single copy vendors as evidenced by U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,858,047 Williams et al.; 3,114,475 Etes; 3,263,859 Searle; 3,768,695 Pearson; 4,043,484 Vanjo; 4,140,243 Etes; 4,174,047 Owens and others. The bulk loading machines, while generally less expensive to manufacture and quicker to load, have been somewhat unacceptable for one or more of the following reasons: They tend to jam thus irritate potential purchasers. They are awkward to adjust. They are slow to adjust and load. They dispense more than one product. They fail to deliver the product.
The present inventor' U.S. patent application Ser. No. 218,475 tends to minimize the foregoing points but it too is relatively expensive and even more importantly, does not have the same general appearance that the public has come to expect of newspaper vendors. Unfamiliar appearance has been judged at least partially responsible for sales drop in several U.S. cities.